Marvel Studios made it clear with the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok that they would be taking the God of Thunder's story in a very unique direction. Along with sending Thor very far away from the confining settings of Earth and Asgard, the film also features locales, characters and a tone that many fans have likened to the aesthetic of Guardians of the Galaxy. While it may seem on a surface level that the former film is drawing from the success of the latter, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige told Heroic Hollywood that the film's tone is a product of director Taika Waititi, along with elaborating on the very different way Guardians influenced the third Thor film.
"Well, I think I would say it’s, and as people see more of Ragnarok, it’s a Taika tone more than a Guardians tone. He’s really adding a very unique point of view to it, but certainly the success of Guardians just boosted our confidence to continue to go in new, fun, weird directions, and I think that led to Doctor Strange and certainly, ultimately, leads to the things we’re doing in Infinity War. You know we did the comic books as you well know do all sorts of fun, mind-bending, trippy storylines that you really hadn’t seen in any movies until we started scratching that surface with Thor and a little bit more in Avengers. A little bit in the quantum realm of Ant-Man. It was really Guardians and then Strange and now Guardians 2 which is saying, 'Okay, the audience is gonna stay with us on this.' Why even attempt to make a movie out of the Infinity Gauntlet if you can’t really do a lot of the crazy things that happen in that Jim Starlin imagination.”
Feige also elaborated further on how Guardians allowed Marvel Studios "to continue to expand and do really unique and really different tonal things," adding his belief that "the popularity of a character in publishing in no way indicates the future success of movies. You don’t need to have … And I think Iron Man proved that and Thor proved that. The character doesn’t need to have been one of the most popular characters ever in our comics as long as they’re just a cool idea. You could make a great movie.”
What do you make of Feige's thoughts? Let us know in the comments. Thor: Ragnarok releases on November 3, 2017.